It is charged with the collection and publication of statistics
related to the economy, population and society of the UK;
responsibility for some areas of statistics in Scotland, Northern
Ireland and Wales is devolved to the devolved governments for those
areas. The ONS functions as the executive office of the National
Statistician , who is also the UK
StatisticsStatistics Authority's Chief
Executive and principal statistical adviser to the UK's National
StatisticsStatistics Institute, and the 'Head Office' of the Government
Statistical Service (GSS). Its main office is in Newport near the
United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office and
Tredegar House , but
another significant office is in
Titchfield in Hampshire, and a small
office is in London. ONS co-ordinates data collection with the
respective bodies in Northern Ireland and Scotland, namely
NISRA and
NRS .

HISTORY

The ONS was formed on 1 April 1996 by the merger of the Central
Statistical Office (CSO) and the Office of Population Censuses and
Surveys (OPCS). Following the
StatisticsStatistics and Registration Service Act
2007 , the United Kingdom
StatisticsStatistics Authority became a
non-ministerial department on 1 April 2008.

PURPOSE AND SCOPE

ONS produces and publishes a wide range of the information about the
United Kingdom that can be used for social and economic policy-making
as well as painting a portrait of the country as its population
evolves over time. This is often produced in ways that make comparison
with other societies and economies possible. Much of the data on which
policy-makers depend is produced by ONS through a combination of a
decennial population census, samples and surveys and analysis of data
generated by businesses and organisations such as the National Health
Service and the register of births, marriages and deaths. Its
publications, and analyses by other users based on its published data,
are reported and discussed daily in the media as the basis for the
public understanding of the country in which they live.

APPLICATIONS OF DATA

The reliance on some of these data by government (both local and
national) makes ONS material central to debates about the
determination of priorities, the allocation of resources and for
decisions on interest rates or borrowing. The complexity and degree
and speed of change in the society, combined with the challenge of
measuring some of these (e.g. in relation to longevity, migration or
illness patterns or fine movements in inflation or other aspects of
national accounts) give rise to periodic debates about some of its
indicators and portrayals. Many of these rely on sources which are
outside of ONS, while some of its own sources need to be supplemented,
for example between censuses, by updated but less rigorously obtained
information from other sources. Consequently, unexpected or incomplete
data or occasional errors or disputes about its analysis can also
attract considerable attention.

ONS data can also be used in epidemiologic studies such as survival
analysis .

INDEPENDENCE

Gordon BrownGordon Brown , then Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced on 28
November 2005, that the government intended to publish plans in early
2006 to legislate to render the ONS and the statistics it generates
independent of government on a model based on the independence of the
Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. This was originally
a 1997 Labour manifesto commitment and was also the policy of the
Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties. Such independence was
also sought by the
Royal Statistical Society and the Statistics
Commission . The
National Statistician would be directly accountable
to Parliament through a more widely constituted independent governing
StatisticsStatistics Board. The ONS would be a non-ministerial government
department so that the staff, including the Director, would remain as
civil servants but without being under direct ministerial control.
The then National Statistician, Dame
Karen Dunnell , stated that
legislation would help improve public trust in official statistics
although the ONS already acts independently according to its own
published guidelines, the National
StatisticsStatistics Code of Practice, which
sets out the key principles and standards that official statisticians,
including those in other parts of the government statistical service,
are expected to follow and uphold.

The details of the plans for independence were considered in
Parliament during the 2006/2007 session and resulted in the Statistics
and Registration Service Act 2007 . In July 2007, Sir Michael Scholar
was nominated by the government to be the three-day-a-week
non-executive chairman of the
StatisticsStatistics Board which, with the
intention of re-establishing faith in the integrity of government
statistics, was to take on statutory responsibility for oversight of
UK statistics in April 2008 and oversee the Office for National
Statistics; also having a duty to assess all UK government statistics.
Following Gordon Brown's announcement of new constitutional
arrangements for public appointments, Sir Michael also became, on 18
July, the first such nominee to appear before the House of Commons
Treasury Committee and to have his nomination subject to confirmation
by the House. On 7 February 2008, following the first meeting of the
shadow board, it was announced that it would be known as the UK
StatisticsStatistics Authority (UKSA).

The work of the ONS covers the collection of data and the analysis
and publication of statistics covering the economy, population, and
society of the UK.

Where data is broken down by geographical area, this is usually done
by the areas defined in the ONS geographical coding system .

DATA COLLECTION

The principal areas of data collection include:

* Agriculture and Environment
* Business and Energy
* Children, Education and Skills
* Crime and Justice
* Economy
* Government
* Health and Social Care
* Labour Market
* People and Places
* Population
* Travel and Transport

Statisticians are also employed by many other Government departments
and agencies, and these statisticians often collect and publish data.
They are members of the
Government Statistical Service and are the
professional responsibility of the head of the service, who is also
the National Statistician. Each department has a statistical service
_Head of Profession_. For example, data on Agriculture, Fishing and
Forestry comes primarily from the Department for the Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs . Along with economic data on which the Treasury and
Bank of England rely for decision-making, many of the statistics that
receive widespread media attention are issued by the Home Office, the
Department of Health , and the Department for Education and Skills .
ONS is also responsible for the maintenance of the _Inter-Departmental
Business Register_ and the _Business Structure Database_.

FORMER DEPARTMENTS

Prior to the establishment of the
UK Statistics Authority , the
statistical work of ONS, since June 2000, was scrutinised by the
Statistics Commission , an independent body with its own chairman and
small staff. This ceased to operate from 1 April 2008. The General
Register Office and the post of
Registrar-General for England "> while
the allocation of
Private Finance Initiative expenditure (albeit
following
OECDOECD and international statistical guidelines according to
who carries the risk) has attracted political attention. Many of the
most controversial topics for statistics issued by government do not
come from the ONS though they are expected to meet _National
Statistics_ standards. Crime statistics, and other data (e.g. health
and education) that could be deemed to assess the effectiveness of
government policies, often attract media scepticism. The compulsory
nature of the census (unlike most other surveys by academics and
market researchers) differentiates the ONS from other data collectors
(apart from
HM Revenue and Customs ).

The Office for National
StatisticsStatistics won the 2004
Big Brother Award for
the "Most Heinous Government Organisation" from the campaigning
organisation
Privacy InternationalPrivacy International for its Citizen Information Project
. The project is one of several that lead the Information
Commissioner to warn that there is a danger of the country
"sleepwalking" into a surveillance society .

In December 2012 the organisation's new website to provide statistics
to the public was described as "a disaster" by members of parliament
on the Public Administration Committee. The chair of the UK Statistics
Authority said that significant improvements to the website were being
made, but admitted that its state at the time made it "difficult to
use, difficult to navigate and difficult to search".